WASHINGTON — Several US lawmakers received threatening letters containing a harmless white powder, but the sender warned more missives including a “harmful material” could follow, a Senate official said.

The news sparked alarm and served as a grim reminder of the 2001 anthrax attacks in which letters containing the deadly pathogen were sent to offices of two Democratic senators and several media offices. Five people were killed.

The anonymous sender “has indicated that additional letters containing a powdery substance will be arriving at more Senate offices,” Senate sergeant-at-arms Terrance Gainer said in a email to staff.

“Some of these letters may contain an actual harmful material,” he added, noting the missives were postmarked from Portland, Oregon.

Similar letters, which included complaints about corporate influence over US politics, also were received by several US media outlets, but they did not contain any white powder, said law enforcement officials quoted by US media.

The letters were received by organizations such as The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Fox News and National Public Radio, reports said.

CBS News quoted a law enforcement official as saying that in missives to comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, the sender warned that 100 letters were sent to the Washington or home-state offices of US senators.

It has been nearly 10 years since 9/11, and the tragedy is still on the minds of many Americans. One of those, writer and artist Rick Veitch, is convinced we haven't been told the complete truth about it.

The questions surrounding that fateful day power the themes and story of his new Image Comics series The Big Lie, which debuts Sept. 7 and reteams Veitch with fellow artist Gary Erskine.

Veitch structured the story similarly to the 1963 Twilight Zone episode "No Time Like the Past," in which a man uses a time machine to try to "fix" three events: warning a Hiroshima policeman about the atomic bomb, assassinating Hitler before World War II and stopping the sinking of the Lusitania.

In an interview with the PBS NewsHour, CIA Director Leon Panetta said that although President Obama was watching some "real-time aspects" of the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound, he did not see the al-Qaeda leader being killed.

Here's part of the exchange with Jim Lehrer:

JIM LEHRER: Did you have access to video of what was actually happening in the compound, etc.?

LEON PANETTA: We had live-time intelligence information that we were dealing with during the operation itself.

JIM LEHRER: Did you actually see - or did you actually see Osama bin Laden get shot?

A frequent firecracker on HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher, Mos Def doesn't duck soapboxes. He carps with wit and invective about pet issues from post-Katrina New Orleans ("It's unconscionable for that reality to persist") to conspiracy theories labeling 9/11 an inside job ("I'm a New Yorker and it just doesn't feel right").

In a recent interview, Assistant Chief James Schwartz of the Arlington County Fire Department (ACFD) revealed an intriguing detail relating to the 9/11 Pentagon attack. Just before the Pentagon was hit, ACFD responded to alarms going off at the USA Today building, located a few miles from there. Yet it is unclear whether there was actually any fire. Other evidence indicates that, as a result of this alarm, when the Pentagon was hit a significant number of fire and medical units were already on the road nearby and available to quickly respond to the attack. Curiously, the two buildings of the USA Today complex were known as the "Twin Towers." [1]

I read this in the Weekend Wall St Journal. I searched their website and couldn't locate the article, but did google and find the same story here:http://www.mercurynews.com/politics/ci_8304102
If this has already been posted on the blog or is not of any real interest, I apologize.
I thought it was interesting that this important piece of the puzzle is resurfacing in the courts.